


Night and Light and the Half-Light

by joely_jo



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, First Time, Post-Episode: s07e17 All Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 02:24:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15939839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: Well, you can’t start to write XF fanfic without writing something set around the events of ‘all things’, now can you?





	Night and Light and the Half-Light

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback is most welcome. I’m new to writing for this fandom and still finding my way. Some inspiration (and the title) has been taken from William Butler Yeats’ He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven.

All along, she realises, he’s been laid out before her, like a corpse for her inspection. From the first moment of their meeting, when she held out her hand to him in his basement office and he saw that she wasn’t what he’d been expecting, he’s been a fallen man.

She knows this. Has known it all along. It’s simply taken seven years for her to really see it.  

Through the slatted blinds, the night glitters with a kaleidoscope of artificial lights; it’s an urban starlight. Living in the city means that the skies are shrouded but, she thinks, that is probably a good thing. She never looks at stars and sees just stars any more. From the doorway, she watches him, his naked body stretched out on the bed, a hidden treasure beneath the sheets. His skin is golden, the arcs of the bones of his face silver-plated in the half light. She knows he is awake, can tell it by the pattern of the rises of his chest, even though his eyes are closed. She sighs.

“I’m such a coward, Mulder.”

At that, his eyes spring open and he meets her gaze. He says nothing, does not move. His silence gives her space to continue.

“I think I’ve been in love with you for a long while.”

She’s left her shoes in his lounge and she feels absurdly small. Her hands are heavy weights at the end of her arms, redundant. His jaw tenses. Around his eyes, the skin creases as he studies her, taking her in, no doubt trying to determine if she is for real. Yet even as he gauges her, tenderness rolls away from him in lapping waves.

“Don’t look at me like that, please, Mulder,” she begs.

He sits up, one hand behind him bearing his weight. “Like what?”

“Like that. It makes me think that you’re in love with me too.”

“Scully.” His voice conveys a good-natured reprimand. An amused smile fights vainly at his lips. “I don’t think it’s been platonic between us for a while, has it?”

She doesn’t answer. There is no need for an answer, because she knows he is damn right.

He flips back the covers and climbs out of bed. She is glad to see that he is wearing boxer shorts; she’s not sure how she would have coped if he’d been as naked as he appeared under those sheets.

Personal space has never been something Fox Mulder has done well, and now is no different. He stands a hair’s breadth away from her, so she has to tilt her face to look at him. Still, she feels so very small.

“Mulder, I... I don’t know what to do.”

Ridiculous tears are pricking at her eyes. She wants to turn and run desperately away from him, but knows that the moment for that kind of fleeing has passed. There is only the way forward now.

“Oh, I think you do,” he says and his voice is so gentle and patient and kind and sexy that she wants to wrap herself up in it and never hear anything else ever again.

It seems perfectly natural, then, to accept his kiss and to return it, quite fiercely; to lay her hand on the bare skin of his upper arm and trace down the radius and ulna to his wrist; to feel briefly for his pulse. He threads his fingers through hers and squeezes, then releases and cups her face so that he might kiss her more deeply.

There is the fast patter of panic inside her, running this way and that, making her want to pull away from him. It’s Newton’s Third Law for human interactions, she thinks, as she forces it down and away, summoning calm from within.

This is Mulder. And it is time.

Long minutes pass as they explore the contours of each other’s mouths.  

When eventually, she pulls back, breathless, mouth open, and looks at him, standing there before her, her brain is lagging half a heartbeat behind her body, trying to comprehend what is happening. She’s pretty sure the FBI has rules against French kissing your partner like this. But since when have they cared about rules? She wants to do it again. He seems to be thinking the same thing and so they lean together once more and merge, tongues alight. His body is warm and close; she can feel the heat emanating from him and she basks in it, in him, as their kissing slows and then they surface again.

Without the sense of his mouth on her, she feels weirdly dislocated, like kissing Mulder in this way has transported her somewhere other than where she expects to be. Is this what he’s always called an ‘out of body experience’?

Almost laughing at the absurdity of her thoughts in the moment, she allows the giddiness engendered in her to run free. She kisses his nose. Mulder smiles like a little boy given praise for a job done well and so she boldly bites his bottom lip.

Her eyes slip downwards, to pause at the sight of the enticingly tented material of his boxer shorts. “I’m sorry, Scully,” he murmurs, his gaze joining hers. They stare at his erection for a moment. His hands reach for hers again, as if he can’t stand not to touch her in some way. “I should be able to kiss you without him thinking that it’s reason to stand up and be counted, but it’s been a while and right now, I gotta admit... I’m kinda turned on.”

So is she. There is suddenly a furnace of heat being stoked in her body and she is powerless to suppress it. “It’s all right, Mulder,” she murmurs back. Feeling brave, she reaches out and touches him, running her finger along the ridge of hardness beneath the soft cotton of his shorts. The way his eyes close and his head rolls back makes her soar. He gives a little thrust into her palm.

“Fuck, Scully. I always knew you’d be good with your hands.” She smiles like cat with a big bowl of cream and he clears his throat, gasps as she squeezes him.

His hands start working at her clothes. He pushes her jacket off her shoulders, catches it one-handed and flings it onto the top of the laundry hamper. Her skirt comes next, the run of the zipper vibrating right through her. As it pools at her feet, she steps out of it and kicks it carelessly to one side. Creases are the last thing on her mind right now. Her green top and bra are next; they land at the foot of his wardrobe. Then he pauses, drops to his knees and begins to peel her pantyhose down her legs.

She expects him to get straight back up again, but when he doesn’t, when he lays his big hands on her thighs and rubs, she knows what he is going to do. “Mulder,” she says. “Mulder, you don’t have to.”

It’s a response born of a half dozen men from her past who have treated the act as a chore – Dana Scully is not the sort of woman who likes to be an imposition to anyone. But he looks up at her and pins her with _that look_ again. “I want to,” he tells her simply.

He slides her panties down her legs, then gives her a gentle push towards the bed, encouraging her to sit on the edge of the mattress. With some anxiety, she does so, watching as he shuffles forward and parts her thighs with determined hands. She fights hard against the tiny voice inside her that is calling that this is Mulder, this is MULDER, and he’s about to go down on her on the edge of his bed. For his part, Mulder doesn’t seem at all affected by what he’s going to do, but his eyes... his eyes are darker than chromium sulphate. She draws in a breath as he begins.

Like a narrator telling a tale, his fluent tongue traces patterns and hieroglyphs across her most sensitive flesh. He’s good at this, Scully dimly thinks, as coherent thought soaks away from her and the world contracts to the two of them and this room and this act. When she comes, it is more powerful than any orgasm she’s exacted from her own hands and she cries out, reaching for him.

And then he’s there, climbing above her, sliding her up the cool sheets and his cock is pushing at her entrance. “Oh, Scully,” he sighs.

In the dark recesses of her pleasure-addled brain, Scully feels pieces of her consciousness bubble and glow, seeking out his like ions in electrolysis. They come together and it is magnificent.        

Afterwards, silence oozes around them. They lie in perfect symmetry of one another for a long while, not speaking, and the heat from their bodies cools. Her skin tingles even though they are not touching. She feels like a dragonfly, newly hatched from a nymph, her wings unfurling and hardening in warm sunshine, waiting to take flight and soar. Eventually, he falls asleep, yet still she watches him, marvelling. The dim, bluish half-light of the city at night ripples like water over his flesh, casting shadows that perform a dance celebratory in his cluttered bedroom.

When, at length, she rises, dresses and leaves, she knows it will not be long before she returns.

 

The End.


End file.
